The Military Art

February 20, 2014

This newly published non-fiction work by SST/TA longtime author and commenter FB Ali is truly a must-read. From the cover of Prison Journey:

FB Ali was a rising star in the Pakistan Army when, in 1969, Gen Yahya Khan, the army chief, declared martial law and took over the country. Disheartened at the direction in which Pakistan was heading, and his inability to do anything about it, he contemplated resigning, but the 1971 war with India intervened.

Given an important combat command shortly before it began he witnessed firsthand how badly this disastrous war was mismanaged by the military regime and the incompetent generals it had appointed. The resulting debacle drove him to initiate and lead the army action that forced Gen Yahya Khan to hand over power to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who had won the 1970 election.

The usual fate of kingmakers befell him: in 1972 he was retired from the army and a few months later arrested and tried on charges of trying to overthrow the government. Narrowly escaping a death sentence, he ended up with life imprisonment, spending over 5 years in prison before he was released following Bhutto's ouster in another military coup. Though offered a significant role in the new setup he decided to move to Canada with his family.

This memoir contains an insider account of many important events of that decade, including the 1971 India-Pakistan war and the troubles in East Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh. It is also a poignant tale of courage and endurance in the face of adversity.

Below are some excerpts from the book which provide a flavour of its contents and style (other excerpts, and reviews, are available on the Amazon sites):

- 1 -

THE BEGINNING

Where did it begin, this road that took me to the sprawling stone fort of Attock, perched on the low hills above the winding Indus River? And then, from there, through the shadow of the gallows, to those many prisons in the Punjab before I finally ended up here in Canada?

Confucius is reputed to have said: The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. What, then, was this first step that set me upon this long road that I have travelled?

Was it the sudden ending of my childhood when, at the age of seven, I was plucked from the warm cocoon of a small family and deposited in the midst of a boarding school up in the hills? I had never been away from home, had never had to fend for myself, did not know any English, which is what they spoke there. I had to grow up fast, very fast.

Or, was it all those new and exciting ideas of nationalism and freedom from foreign rule that Taufiq put into my innocent head? My friend, my difficult friend (I was the only one he had in that school), whose precocious mind knew much more about the outside world than I did, and teemed with ideas that I knew nothing about. I still remember the excitement of those "rambles" on which we were occasionally taken out, when, while the other boys played boisterous games around us, I would sit, rapt and entranced, on the sun dappled slope of the wooded hill while he told me the tale of the Count of Monte Cristo, or held forth on how India had to overthrow its subjection to the British.

Poor Taufiq! He could not cope with a world that neither understood nor cared for the brilliance of his mind, the ebullient joy of his spirit, the essential innocence of his soul, a world that would make no allowances for the peculiarities of his nature, a nature that he had neither fashioned nor sought. Finally, unable (or unwilling) to carry on this constant struggle, he went to a railway platform and stepped off it, departing from a world that seemed to have no use for him.

Was it that intoxicating time when I was consumed by the passionate struggle to create Pakistan? My first two years in college had been spent in the heedless but innocent enjoyment of living away from home in a big city. Then, suddenly (it was almost like a religious conversion) this struggle was the only thing that now mattered in my life, and I threw myself into it completely: organizing my fellow students, marching in the processions that mobilized citizens, facing off the police and hostile activists, trudging through the countryside, village after village, mile upon weary mile, seeking votes. Then, as ominous clouds began to gather in the sky, engaging in cloak and dagger escapades in the murky, shadowy world of Khurshid Anwar, risking much more than I then realized.

December 24, 2013

Pour a Christmas pint, Athenaeum readers, & settle in for one of the great aviation tales. Written by Frederick Forsyth, published in 1975, this novella tells of a 1950s RAF pilot trying to fly home to England for the holidays in a deHavilland Vampire. But fate, always the hunter, intervenes...

June 08, 2012

This was a year long project when I was a student at the US Army War College. It was required to be a group project. The picture is of Signal Knob at the north end of Massanutten Mountain in the Valley. pl

September 16, 2007

LTC Michael Eisenstadt (USAR) has written this excellent article on tribal engagement in Iraq. It has been published in the "Miliary Review." In civilian life he is a scholar at the "Washington Institute for Near East Policy." I recommend it. pl

August 14, 2007

This is the regimental coat of arms of the 1st Special Forces Regiment.

The United States Army has never liked Army Special Forces. The Green Berets started as a reincarnation of part of the OSS' World War 2 military mission. This was the part in which the OSS worked in occupied territory against the occupier using the locals as guerrillas. JFK adapted the unit to the counterinsurgency role when he was president. The men and officers were always selected for suitability in those roles. The job required a professional who did not need the psychological support of being in a big unit, was endlessly adaptable and innovative, good at languages and cultures and who liked working with foreigners. Special Forces sergeants are trained to command battalions of troops as required, irregular troops.

Over the years since VN there has been a steady infiltration of men into SF who are not the same breed. Fifteen years ago, the Army began to promote officers with this background to general officer rank. They tended to pick the ones with whom they were the least uncomfortable.

My friends tell me that the "rangerization" of Special Forces is nearing completion. What is left over after that process is complete will probably be made up into just another intelligence unit.

August 09, 2007

"My own units in Vietnam were occasionally the victims of errant rifle fire, mortar rounds and bombs — indeed, the very success of an infantry attack is dependent on leaning forward into friendly supporting fires.

But, after the fact, the Tillman death played out differently. His unit reported that he was killed in a ferocious engagement with the enemy, and the truth was hidden by the chain of command until, as is almost always the case, the truth escaped. As has been proved repeatedly, bad news doesn’t get any better with age. Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr., who was responsible for the cover-up, has been censured and faces demotion.

Sadly, Corporal Tillman’s death comes with another unhappy legacy: a ludicrous change in the Army regulation that deals with reporting casualties. With this change, the Army now requires a formal, independent investigation into the death of every American in a hostile area.

If this provision had been in place when we began our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, there would have been about 3,700 investigations by now. The American losses in Vietnam would have required more than 58,000 inquiries. And if the regulation had existed in World War II, we would have conducted 400,000 investigations, requiring perhaps as many investigating officers as we now have troops in Iraq." Jack Jacobs

Jack Jacobs is a retired infantry colonel who holds the Medal of Honor. That makes him a kind of military saint, a marja' for soldiers.

What he is really saying in this oped is that if this new regulation is applied fully there will be no more combat operations. Indeed there will be no wars involving ground forces other than little teams of Special Operations people. That might not be a bad thing, but it is highly unlikely in light of the unchanging nature of humanity.

Major ground forces, doing major fighting inevitably suffer major losses. Sometimes these losses are so heavy that there are not enough survivors to deal with the wounded, much less the dead. I have seen rifle companies loose a third of their strength in killed in a day or two. That would be over fifty men. Another third were wounded. People these days sometimes say that no one should be left on a battlefield. Should the wounded carry the dead? This question often has to be answered in the presence of the enemy.

The point is that there are always a lot of dead. It is a natural circumstance of war. Individual investigation of combat deaths implies that these deaths are analogous to civilian deaths, perhaps to civilian police deaths. They are not.

CDI Science Fellow Haninah Levine has translated and summarized the findings of Israel’s Winograd Commission Interim Report that studied a selection of Israel’s failures in its recent conflict with the Hezbollah in Lebanon. The report goes into several issues, some of them indirectly, and it would seem to have ignored some other controversies. However, a few of the findings are very relevant to the defense debate – such as it is – in America. The report is bad news for the advocates of the so-called “revolution in military affairs” here. We provide a summary of some of Levine’s findings and a copy of his complete analysis of the Winograd Commission Interim Report.

Levine, an Israeli citizen and CDI science fellow, writes in his summary of the Winograd Commission Interim Report that the failures the Israel Defense Forces encountered “stemmed, according to the commission, from ‘excessive faith in the power of the Air Force and incorrect appraisal of the power and preparedness of the enemy, amounting to an unwillingness to examine the details.’” More precisely, the failure can be attributed to a new twist in the decades-old agenda of the advocates of air power. Levine’s analysis connects what some in this country call the “revolution in military affairs” to a “new doctrine [in Israel] which emerged as stating [according to the commission] that ‘success can be achieved by means of ‘effects’ and indirect ‘levers,’ in place of classic concepts of success….’” Later, Levine writes, “Faith in advanced air and artillery system as magical ‘game changing’ systems absolved the [Israeli] General Staff from the need to consider what capabilities … the enemy possessed, and led the IDF into a strategic trap….”

It is a trap, one might add, that America now finds itself enmeshed in Iraq and Afghanistan in large part for the same reasons.

Levine’s summary of the interim commission report also goes a step further: the inappropriate reliance by Israeli’s Chief of Staff Gen. Dan Halutz and others on their new doctrine was complemented – rather exacerbated – by a low state of readiness in the backbone of the Israel Defense Force, the reserve ground forces. Levine writes, “the annual training given to reserve combat units was slashed dramatically [before the war].” Moreover, he writes, “the military’s emergency supply depots witnessed a steady decline in equipment levels, such that by the outbreak of the war in July 2006 supplies of both ammunition and medical equipment were dangerously low. ‘Even more worrisome,’ according to the commission, ‘is the lack of awareness within both military and civilian echelons regarding the factual state of matters.’”

The commission stated specifically, “the quality of equipment in the depots sent a message about values to the reserve soldiers. And in fact, missing, obsolete or broken equipment told the reservist that there was no one making sure that he would be equipped in a manner … that would allow him to operate in an optimal way….”

Given the shortages in many categories of U.S. equipment before and during the American invasion and occupation of Iraq (such as tactical radios, small arms ammunition, first aid kits, machinegun repair parts, M4 carbines and much else – to say nothing of body armor) and the backlogs of unrepaired equipment lining up at American military depots, the Israeli commission’s findings have a particularly unpleasant ring all too close to home.

Levine sums up the witches brew of high tech fantasies and basic unpreparedness: “as the conflict unfolded, Halutz’s optimistic assessment of the military’s state of readiness merged with his false confidence in the abilities of its advanced weapon systems … to create a state in which the chief of staff’s concept of what his forces were capable of achieving was completely divorced both from reality and from what the information available to him suggested.” One could, of course, substitute the name Donald Rumsfeld for Halutz in this conclusion.

Because the Winograd Commission failed to address them, two major issues are not discussed. There is a potential, perhaps even direct, connection between Halutz’s preoccupation with Israel’s version of the “revolution in military affairs” and the low preparedness of the Israeli ground forces: to pay for the high cost of high tech wizardry, it seems very possible that military readiness was selected as the “bill payer.” Secondly, the Winograd Commission’s interim report apparently did not address one of the most controversial elements of the campaign in Lebanon: the apparent “collective punishment” of civilian targets in Lebanon by Israeli artillery and air systems.

In the United States, the “revolution in military affairs” is being recognized as an abject failure only dimly and only in some corners; the Winograd Commission would seem to indicate that in Israel the matter is being faced a little more directly. On the other hand, in both countries it is not clear when, even if, the body politic will confront the issue of the civilian deaths resulting from domestic military forces and the very likely huge and long lasting ramifications that “collateral damage” (an atrocious euphemism) will incur, and already has.

The entirety of Levine’s summary of the Winograd Commission Interim Report follows; it also addresses other issues; it is worth reading.